The Boy in the Yellow Boots
by plastiscine
Summary: Rachel never fit in, not even when she was a little girl. Unbeknownst to her, one person from her past she's long since forgotten might just change her present in a very real way. Contains childhood flashbacks, later chapts will take place during present.


Rachel was lost, and all the streets and houses looked unfamiliar and she was terrified.

Today had been miserable. One of her classmates had kicked sand in her face, effectively destroying her sandcastle and the stage she'd been trying to construct with wet sand and a purple shovel. When the teacher had asked who everyone's hero was, and the children had stared at her strangely when she'd said Barbara Streisand. No one appreciated her baton twirling or the fact that she was a great tap dancer. It was very insulting.

Rachel wanted to go home, so when the teacher was busy paying attention to one of the other kids while they were lined up in two neat rows, that's exactly what she did. They were supposed to stand and wait for their parents to pick the up but hers would be late that day. She didn't want to wait. Slipping away from the rest of her class, Rachel somehow managed to remain unseen.

It turns out that as much as she needed to go home, she just couldn't find it anywhere. Of course Rachel knew she shouldn't have run off without her dads, but she didn't want to be at school, it was a horrible place and the boy who had been sitting next to her in the reading circle smelled like paste.

Her dads had said today was going to be fun and that she would get to play and make friends, but it seemed to Rachel that she'd never find anyone to be friends with. It seemed like no one was interested. Wasn't she special? Her dads always told her so, but what if they were wrong?

Sitting on the grass of a park she happened to come across, Rachel cried. She was so frustrated with everything. All this walking had made her tired and she couldn't find the street she lived on. On top of that, she'd spent most of the day getting pointed and laughed at. She cried and she cried until her hands were wet, and her pretty pink shirt with a star on the front was drenched. This seemed unusual to five year-old Rachel Berry, and she rubbed her eyes and blinked them open, realizing that it had not been her tears that had done this at all, but a sudden downpour of rain. Even her pigtails were drooping a bit from the rain and she could feel her eyes well up with even more tears. Now she was cold and wet on top of being alone, and while she would never admit it, she was scared. What if she never saw her dads ever again? What would she do?

"Are you okay?"

It was hard to see at first, with the mix of rain and tears streaming down her face. It was only then that Rachel realized she wasn't getting rained on anymore… and there were two bright yellow rain boots near her feet. She couldn't speak at first, a sob was still stuck in the back of her throat but the boy in the yellow rain boots seemed to understand.

"It's okay. Let me help you up off the grass. My mom always gets real angry at me if I get grass stains on my clothes. You don't want to mess yours up."

Rachel was only five but she knew what most boys her age looked like. The boys in her class had been a bit messy with stains on their shirts and dirt on their faces sometimes… but the only thing that she noticed that was anything remotely like that was that the boy standing before her had a band-aid on his knee. Extending her arm out to his he took her hand and helped her up, and when they were both standing nearly eye to eye on the grass, he angled his navy blue umbrella to cover them both.

"So, what's your name?" he asked with a grin, and Rachel noticed that his hair was combed neatly while hers was definitely no longer neat at all. Instead her hair felt heavy, her soaking wet pigtails feeling like they might come undone.

"I'm Rachel. Rachel Berry."

"What are you doing out here all by yourself?"

She had almost answered right away but something seemed to dawn on her just then. "Hey, wait a minute, you're out here by yourself, too! What are you doing out here?"

The boy with the curly hair just laughed, and shrugged. "No one'll notice I'm gone anyways."

"Well, people will certainly notice I'm gone!" Rachel seemed sure of herself, now. "I was on my way home because school is this really terrible place and then I got lost, and it started to rain, and I'm all alone out here and I just know someone's noticed I'm missing."

He stared at her for a minute and looked like he might say something.

"What is it?" Rachel asked bluntly.

"Well. You aren't by yourself anymore. So that's good, right?"

Before she could answer him there was a flash of lightening in the sky that caused Rachel to jump and a loud cracking sound accompanied it soon after. Instead of clearing up, it seemed the rain was actually twice as bad as it had been moments before.

It turned out that his umbrella wasn't really sturdy enough for this sort of downpour. The wind was picking up and she could tell it was becoming hard for him to keep it steady above their heads.

"I think you're right," he spoke, seeming very positive about what he was about to say. "Someone's definitely noticed you're missing by now. You're not the kind of person to be forgotten about." He handed her his umbrella when he was done speaking and his clothes started to get wet right away. It wasn't long before he was equally drenched as she was.

"What are you doing?" Rachel was completely aghast.

"Being a gentleman."

"But why? Why are you being so nice to me?"

"You're a damsel in distress aren't you?"

Rachel thought about it for a minute. She was definitely a damsel, and she was most certainly in distress. She also felt tears welling up in her eyes, making the little boy and his wet curly hair turn into a blur. She nodded in compliance and he gently grabbed her hand, and they ran across the park together with his yellow boots hitting the grass with an audible squishing sound and Rachel's wet hair flapping behind her. He led her to a spot underneath the slide, the big one that swirled around and reminded Rachel of carrot juice because it was so bright. She hoped that he would just think her crying just now was only rain on her face.

Instead of mentioning any of that, they talked instead. Rachel told the boy about her two Dads, and while he was skeptical at first (he wondered what it would be like two have two of his own dad and decided that was really not as cool as it sounded like) he didn't make fun of her at all for it. He seemed kind of interested actualy. He said he had never known someone could have two dads at all, so Rachel really must be speciall after all.

It made Rachel feel really good when he said they both sounded like really great dads, and told Rachel how lucky she was she got to have two of them instead of one. They talked about their favorite Disney movies and Rachel bragged about knowing all the words to every song. He seemed very impressed by this.

"Are you any good?"

He looked perplexed when Rachel laughed.

"I have a few singing trophies. My Dads are very supportive of my dream. I'm going to be on Broadway one day!"

"Broadwhat?"

"You know, Broadway? On stage? In a play in front of hundreds of people, performing every single night!"

The storm was beginning to let up as they sat together. There was something in the way the little boy in the rainboots was looking at Rachel.

"What?" She asked, placing her hands on her hips.

"Sing something, then! You could just be pulling my leg and I'd never know it."

"Fine, I will."

Rachel could tell that he was shocked she accepted his challenge so easily. He didn't know her very well yet so he had no idea that Rachel Berry never turned down an opportunity to sing in front of an audience. Even if it was an audience of one.

By the time she was done she realized he was staring at her with wide-eyes.

"If you didn't like it, that's okay. I have to let you know in advance though that you negative criticisms of my talent will not stop me in the slightest!"

"No, it's not that." He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, something Rachel never really saw kids their age do, but she saw one of her dads do all the time. It was sort of funny and a little weird.

"What is it then?"

Hopping onto his feet, he smile and shrugged. "You're just something else, Rachel Berry. I think one day, you're going to be something really special."


End file.
